Since the discovery of the antineoplastic properties of the nitrogen mustards more than 50 years ago, cancer chemotherapy has been an ever expanding area of scientific endeavor, and has been a critical component of cancer treatment along with surgery and radiation therapy. Where chemotherapy was once accepted only as a means to extend survival time for those patients diagnosed as incurable by surgery and/or radiation therapy, it is now a recognized modality of treatment in nearly all of the more than two thousand variations of cancer.
Modern cancer chemotherapy typically involves a combination of two or three different drugs, and the advances in technology and medical knowledge have greatly improved a patient's chances of recovery in many forms of cancer. The role of antineoplastic agents in cancer therapy varies widely depending upon the form of cancer. For example, chemotherapy is often the primary course of therapy in cancers of the ovary, testis, breast, bladder, and others, in leukemias and lymphomas, and is generally employed in combination with radiation therapy in the treatment of a large number of sarcomas, melanomas, myelomas, and others. In contrast, chemotherapy is often used only as a last resort or as a palliative treatment for most solid tumors, such as carcinomas of the pancreas and lung. There are exceptions within each class of tumor or other neoplasm.
Chemotherapeutic agents, which are commonly referred to throughout this specification as "antineoplastic agents" are classified into a number of diverse groups. The vast majority of these agents act as cytotoxic drugs, and each member of a specific group is postulated to typically exert its cytotoxic effects through a similar biological mechanism. However, it is important to note that a complete understanding of the biological and biochemical mechanisms of action of antineoplastic drugs are not fully known. The mechanisms of action recited in this specification are based upon the current state of the art, and each of these postulated mechanisms may or may not be important to the mechanism of actual cytotoxicity of the drug, or the manner in which the toxic incidences are allayed by the protective agents recited herein.
Unfortunately, nearly all of the antineoplastic agents in use today have the potential to produce significant toxic effects on normal healthy cells apart from the desired killing effects on cancer cells. Drug toxicity can be severe enough to create life-threatening situations, which requires the coadministration of other drugs, the reduction and/or discontinuation of the antineoplastic drug, or the performance of other prophylactic maneuvers, any of which may impact negatively on the patient's treatment and/or the quality of life. Many times, the failure to achieve control of a patient's disease is due to the measures which must be taken to reduce the unwanted toxicity of the antineoplastic agent on healthy cells.